<p>  </p> <p>My dissertation demonstrates the Jewish tradition’s significance for rhetoric by analyzing Biblical ‎encounters with the divine—the ultimate Other. Thus, this dissertation responds to calls such as Steven B. Katz’s to continually redefine what ‎‎“rhetoric” means to us (“Hebrew Bible” 134). In the past several decades, there has been ‎increasing interest in rhetorics that challenge ‎our preconceived notions of what constitutes ‎‎“rhetoric,” both loosening the Greeks and Romans from a skewed reception history and calling ‎for definitions of rhetoric to move “beyond the Greeks” (Lipsom and Binkley). Both these ‎approaches highlight the need for a more diverse understanding of rhetoric—an understanding ‎that better foregrounds the import of the Other. The still-germinal field of Jewish rhetorics has ‎emerged as one response to these calls to diversify and decolonize the rhetorical tradition. As ‎such, this dissertation is also a reclamation of a Jewish tradition that has been—inadvertently ‎and explicitly—ignored, misunderstood, and suppressed.‎</p> <p><br></p> <p>I argue that representations of divine ‎encounters in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) offer a rhetorical framework for encountering the ‎Other—human and divine—as holy. Neither appropriative nor obeisant, this framework offers a ‎uniquely Jewish perspective on encountering the Other—one that has not received adequate ‎academic attention. In a moment where the imperative to engage with Others is so pressing, I ‎address that call to action by bringing together a breadth of scholarship in Jewish studies, ‎rhetorical theory, and Biblical studies to develop a Jewish rhetorical framework for encountering the Other—human and divine—as holy, which I call a “covenant rhetoric.”</p> <p><br></p> <p>This covenant rhetoric, I ‎assert, is not reserved for encounters with the divine, but is also applicable to human rhetorical ‎interactions. My dissertation thus offers a rhetorical model for encountering as holy the human ‎Others with whom we share our existence. As our diverse society continues to wrestle with the ‎ethical imperative towards the Other, I show how the Tanakh prompts us to reconsider the ‎rhetorical potential of encountering Otherness as holiness. In the process, I demonstrate ‎rhetoric’s centrality to religion, to spirituality, and to living an ethically-informed life. ‎</p>

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Scholars of American Jewish history have long debated the complicity of the American Jewish community in the loss of six million Jewish lives in Europe during the Holocaust. After Hitler took power in 1933, American Jewish leaders took to the streets to protest the Nazi Party’s abuse of German Jews. Two central figures in this history are Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise and Revisionist Zionist Ben Hecht because of their wide-reaching protest movements that operated in competition with each other. Although the historiography presents Wise and Hecht's inability to unite as the product of difference, my examination of their protest performances presents a novel picture of similarity. Despite their ideological antagonism, Wise and Hecht's shared cultural identities, as both Americans and Jews, produced pageants with decidedly similar elements. The three productions studied here – The Case of Civilization Against Hitler (1934), Stop Hitler Now (1943), and We Will Never Die (1943) – were reflective of these identities. Appealing to their Americanness, they performed rituals of democratic justice. Appealing to their Jewishness, they presented Jewish prayer, iconography, and ritual related to divine justice. In highlighting the parallels in the performances, I read their actions as successful insofar as they appealed to a diverse American Jewish audience.

Published in 1985, Marguerite Duras' La Douleur is a collection of six autobiographical and semi-autobiographical short stories written during and just after the German Occupation. Echoing the French national sentiment of the 1970s and 1980s, these stories examine Duras' own capacity for good and evil, for forgetting, repressing, and remembering. The first of these narratives, the eponymous "La douleur," is the only story in the collection to take the form of a diary, and it is this narrative, along with a posthumously published earlier draft of the same text, that will be the focus of this thesis. In both versions, Duras recounts her last tortuous months of waiting for her husband, Robert Antelme, to return from a German concentration camp after he was arrested and deported for his participation in the French Resistance. Though Duras claims in her 1985 preface to "La douleur" that she has no memory of having written this diary and that it has "nothing to do with literature," when it is compared to the original version it becomes clear that substantial changes in style and tone were made to the 1985 version before publication. Though many of Duras' peers disregarded this rewritten version of "La douleur" as a shameful distortion of the truth, it is my contention that historical accuracy was never Duras' primary goal. Instead, what manifests in these two versions of the same story is Duras' path toward understanding and closure in the wake of a traumatic event. Using a combination of psychoanalytic and post-structuralist theory, I will show that Truth and History are essentially incompatible when narrating trauma. Instead what is central to these two texts is their emotional accuracy: the manner in which the feelings and impressions associated with a traumatic event are accurately portrayed.

Ten Jewish second-generation men and women from metro Portland, Oregon were interviewed regarding growing up in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The American-born participants ranged in age from fifty-one to sixty-four years of age at the time of the interviews. Though the parents were deceased at the time of this study the working definition of a Holocaust survivor parent included those individuals who had been refugees or interned in a ghetto, labor camp, concentration camp, or extermination camp as a direct result of the Nazi Regime in Europe from 1933 to 1945. A descriptive phenomenological approach was utilized. Eight open-ended questions yielded ten unique perspectives. Most second-generation do not habitually inform others of their second-generation status. This is significant to conflict resolution as the effects of the Holocaust are trans-generational. The second-generation embody resilience and their combined emphasis was for all people to become as educated as possible.

Manga masterpiece Message to Adolf’s fictional narrative intertwines the Holocaust, romance, espionage, and friendship in its international World War II-focused narrative. Using theory on nationalism and Japanese memories of WWII, this thesis argues the violence the characters initiate and suffer blurs lines between perpetrator, hero, and victim to critique the power of nationalism. Its message concerning the danger of nationalism is as applicable for global audiences now as when it was published in 1985.

Submitted by Haroudo Xavier Filho (haroudo.xavierfo@ufpe.br) on 2016-04-05T18:55:03Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Tese_FernandoOliveira_BC.pdf: 1673465 bytes, checksum: 1dd9f324243845201f4505656f28d47e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-05T18:55:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Tese_FernandoOliveira_BC.pdf: 1673465 bytes, checksum: 1dd9f324243845201f4505656f28d47e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-21 / CAPES / Este trabalho tem por objetvo analisar, no âmbito dos Estudos Culturais, três romances do escritor judeu luso-norte-americano Richard Zimler (1956-), nascido em Nova Iorque e naturalizado português em 2002. Esses três romances são do chamado Ciclo Sefárdico ou Sefaradita, que consiste em quatro romances “históricos” inter-dependentes que focam diferentes ramos e gerações de uma família de judeus portugueses, a família Zarco: O último cabalista de Lisboa – The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (1996), Meia-Noite ou o princípio do mundo – Hunting Midnight (2003), Goa ou o guardião da aurora – The Guardian of The Down (2005) e A sétima porta – The Seventh Gate (2007). Desses quatro romances foram selecionados três, que constituem uma Trilogia da Inquisição, pois cobrem um espaço de tempo no qual atuou o Santo Ofício (preliminares e arrefecimento), mas o último é situado durante o surgimento da Shoá (o Holocausto). Assim, a análise dessa trilogia pauta a condição judaica da comunidade sefaradita portuguesa sob as perseguições em diálogo intercultural e transcultural com outras minorias culturais perseguidas: personagens judeus e árabes no primeiro romance da trilogia inquisitorial, judeus e africanos no segundo e judeus e indianos no terceiro. Nesse sentido, cada capítulo de análise se devide em dois blocos. No primeiro bloco, questões de memória, diáspora e identidade cultural são analisadas sob reflexões de Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, Roland Walter, Édouard Glissant, Paul Gilroy, Yosef Yerushalmi, Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora, Jacques Derrida, Cynthia Ozick, etc., quando são solicitados no percurso analítico; no segundo, na esteira do pensamento de Hana Wirth-Nesher, Yonatan Ratosh, George Steiner, Gilles Deleuze e Felix Guattari, o bi/multilinguismo é analisado como meio de desterritorialização/extraterritorialidade e reterritorialização agenciados por “línguas menores” (hebraico, árabe, boxímane e concani) nas “línguas maiores” (inglês e português) nas quais os romances da trilogia são escritos, agenciamento que o autor desta tese vê como projeto literário do escritor Richard Zimler para consolidar sua Diasporic Citizenship (Cidadania Diaspórica), conceito usado a partir de Michel Laguerre. Consolidação que faz de Richard Zimler, também a partir do conceito diaspórico de literatura judaica, pertencer transnacionalmente a ambas as literaturas em que publica, embora escreva apenas em inglês: a norte-americana e a portuguesa / This work aims to examine, within Cultural Studies, three novels of the Jewish Portuguese-American writer Richard Zimler (1956-), born in New York and naturalized Portuguese in 2002. These three novels are the so-called Sephardic or Sepharadic Cycle, consisting of four novels "historical" inter-dependent that focus on different branches and generations of a family of Portuguese Jews, the Zarco family: The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon – O último cabalista de Lisboa (1996), Hunting Midnight – Meia-Noite ou o princípio do mundo (2003), The Guardian of The Down – Goa ou o guardião da aurora (2005) and The Seventh Gate – A Sétima Porta (2007). Three of these four novels were selected, which make up a Trilogy of the Inquisition, because they cover a span of time in which acted the Holy Office (preliminary and cooling), but The Seventh Gate is situated in the emergence of the Shoah (the Holocaust). Thus, the analysis of this trilogy focus the Jewishness of the Portuguese Sephardic community under persecution in intercultural and cross-cultural dialogue with other persecuted cultural minorities (through its characters): Jews and Arabs in the first novel of the Trilogy Inquisition, Jews and Africans in the second novel and Jews and Indians in the third novel. In this sense each analytical chapter is devided into two blocks. In the first block, memory issues, diaspora and cultural identity are analyzed under reflections of Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, Roland Walter, Édouard Glissant, Paul Gilroy, Yosef Yerushalmi, Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora, Jacques Derrida, Cynthia Ozick, for example, when they are asked for the analytical route; the second one, following the thought of Hana Wirth-Nesher, Yonatan Ratosh, George Steiner, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the bi/multilingualism is seen as a means of desterritorialization/extraterritoriality and reterritorialization agenciaded by "minor languages" (Hebrew, Arabic, Bushmen and Konkani) whitin "major languages" (English and Portuguese) in which the trilogy of novels are written, agency that the author of this thesis see as a Richard Zimler's literary project to consolidate his Diasporic Citizenship, concept by Michel Laguerre. Its a consolidation that makes Richard Zimler (also from the concept of diasporic Jewish Literature), transnationally belong to both literatures he publishes (although he writes only in English): the American and Portuguese literatures.

There is an ancient rabbinic apothegm which asserts that prophecy “ceased” after the last Biblical prophets, Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi. After their deaths, a new phase of divine revelation was believed to have emerged through manifestations of a bat kol (lit. “Daughter of a voice”). This thesis examines the bat kol’s function within the contours of the Babylonian Talmud, primarily, employing philological, literary, and historical analyses. Moreover, it includes a review of parallels with Biblical and Second-Temple era, Apocalyptic works, so as to suggest possible origins. In addition, a sample of about ten stories are presented as representative of larger categories I consider best exhibit the bat kol’s purpose. The categories include: announcing an individual’s entry into the world to come, encomium and disdain towards individuals, matters related to Halacha (Jewish Law), and miscellaneous. As a result we discover how the rabbis employed the bat kol to address contemporary concerns.

In contemporary philosophy about justice, a contrast between empirical and transcendental approaches can be identified. Hillel Steiner represents an empirical approach: he argues for building an account of justice-as-rights out of the minimal inductive material of psychological linguistic and moral intuitions. From this opening, he ultimately concludes that persons have original rights to self-ownership and to an initially equal share of natural resources. Emmanuel Levinas represents a transcendental approach: he argues that justice arises from a transcendent ethical relation of responsibility-for-the-Other. This relation underpins all subjective cognition, and makes rationality, reasoning, and rights possible. Analysis of each of these positions reveals certain problems. On the one hand, Steiner’s argument contains a number of latent methodological, conceptual, and structural presuppositions. These include the pretheoretical concepts of “person”, “equality”, and “consistency”. These presuppositions prefigure and condition the conclusions which Steiner reaches. On the other hand, Levinas fails to provide a convincing account of how the self comes to be an object of my own deliberations about morality and justice. This amounts to an annihilation of the subject which undermines his argument for the subject as a site of responsible action. As Steiner identifies, justice encompasses equal moral agents. Levinas’s hyperbolic description of the ethical relation’s asymmetry must therefore be revised. Nevertheless, what remains is the strength of Levinas’s argument for the priority of the ethical relation over thematization, rationality, and consciousness. The hidden presuppositions supporting Steiner’s work are evidence of Levinas’s plausibility in this respect. Steiner’s account of justice-as-rights requires a prior ethical relation in which we recognise one another as separate persons, each possessing an ethical status of their own; an attitude of justice motivates Steiner’s description of justice. This attitude is evident in language, which is communication before it is thought. In that individual rights can be conceived only on the basis of a relation of responsibility, rights are primordially the rights of the Other.

<p>This study presents a new reading of the <i>Perlesvaus</i>, an anonymous thirteenth-century Old French Grail romance bizarrely structured around an Arthurian restaging of the battle between the Old and the New Law. I construe this hyper-violent, phantasmagorical text as a profoundly significant work of “trauma fiction” encoding a hitherto-unrecognized crisis of religious ethics and identity in Western Europe in the first half of the thirteenth century. Combining literary and historical analysis and drawing on current trends in trauma studies, I tie what I term the “deranged discourse” of the <i>Perlesvaus</i> to the brutal onset of internal crusading in southern France (the papal-sponsored Albigensian Crusade, 1209-29), making the case that the collective trauma staged in its narrative perturbations was a contributing factor in the well-documented worsening of Western European antisemitism during this period. One key analytical construct I develop is the “doppelganger Jew”—personified in the <i>Perlesvaus</i> by its schizoid authority figure, Josephus, a conflation of first Christian priest and first-century Romano-Jewish historian—who functions as an uncanny embodiment of powerful, unacknowledged fears that Christians were losing their spiritual moorings and reverting into reviled, scapegoated Jews. Traces of this collective trauma are explored in other contemporary texts, and one chapter examines how the fourteenth-century <i>Book of John Mandeville</i> revives similar fears of collapsing Judeo-Christian identity and unfolds under the sign of the doppelganger Jew.</p>